Sail
by sankontesu
Summary: Inuyasha's a lack-luster sailor who would rather have scurvy than be out on the open ocean, and Kagome's a biologist in hunt for her long coveted pod of whales- in dire need of a navigator.
1. Chapter 1

**S A I L**

 _"I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail."_

 _-Inuyasha probably_

* * *

"You'll never get the mast up that way."

Kagome twisted around with an arched eyebrow, surveying the area for the location of the voice. But there was nothing but the gentle crash of waves on the dock, and the black beady eyes of a seagull staring back at her as he stood in wait for scraps on a stained wooden beam. (Which, joke's on him because she didn't have money for any snacks today.)

"Over _here_."

She moved her head to the right and sure enough there was a man; looking at her with a mix of confusion and…disdain? She blinked twice and then righted herself, trying to place if she knew him or not, (trying to not be distracted by the tanned sleeveless arms crossing his chest).

No certainly not, she'd recognize that silvery white hair (and impressive frown) anywhere for sure if that were the case. There's no way she'd forget him so easily.

"I'm sorry do I know you from…?" She hedged, waiting for the man to confirm they were strangers. But then his expression evolved quickly into unexpected disappointment and she worried her bottom lip, second guessing herself.

"No, guess not." He shrugged almost like he had given up on a very daunting task, then pivoted on his foot to start briskly walking towards a tiny slop of a bar at the end of the boardwalk. Kagome tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, only to have it fall back into her eyes.

"Wait, what were you trying to say?"

He stopped and glanced back with pricked ears.

"About um," she reached down to grapple with the heavy material of her sailboat's mast, "this?"

"You were putting it up wrong."

"Do you ah…happen to know how to put it up _right_?" She flashed him her most pleading grin, rubbed the back of her head, and peered at him with her best attempt at 'sparkling innocence'.

He didn't look like he was buying it, if that permanent scowl was indicative of anything. She scratched the back of her bare leg with the opposite limb, and decided to switch tactics. She sighed and placed fists on each hip. "I was _supposed_ to have someone else come help me this morning, but the jerk- who by the way demanded to be paid up front- never showed up and now I have to do it myself or else I won't be ready to sail off by dusk." She blew strands of hair from her face and her expression pinched into a look of petulance when they fell back into their preferred spot of origin, pilling on top of her eyelashes. "So now I've got no funds, got no idea how to put this thing up-"

"You said afternoon."

Kagome rooted her lips in a pout and shook her head, carrying on, "No that's the worst part, I told him, _multiple_ times, before noon-"

" _After_ noon." He snapped back at her, this time stepping onto her boat from the dock (when had he even gotten that close?), and making loud stomping sounds as his boots echoed against the maple of her boat's floor.

"Well how would you know?" Kagome shot back, staring him down with a guarded look.

The man rolled his eyes and kneeled down to where the sailboat's mast was tangled into a heavy dry knot. "Because I was there."

"What?"

He gave her a pointed look and a bolt of awareness struck straight through her.

"Inuyasha!"

"Kagome."

She stepped back in shock, although it was quickly overtaken by rage. "I have been expecting you since Nine AM this morning!"

He growled low in his throat as he continued to detangle the mess she had made of the sail. "I don't see _why_ 'd ya'd do that when ya told me to be here _after_ noon."

Kagome let a simmering sound break from her mouth as she rose fingers to rub her temples, hoping to massage away the arrogance in his tone and the fury in her bones. "Do you have any idea what _time_ it is?"

"Five?" At the molten hot lava that shot through both eyes towards him, Inuyasha stumbled around his words uncharacteristically and amended with, "-ish?"

"It is Five-Forty-five."

"So…" He held one free corner of the mast and walked to the other end of the boat where he got to work hoisting it up. "Afternoon, basically."

"Give me back my money."

He placed a tool in between his teeth and the words came out muddled. "Can't do that, lady."

"Oh yes you can." Kagome saw he was having trouble tugging a part of the sail towards him, snagged on a splinter in the wood. A hole really, from when she tried to ignore the price to get her boat mite treated and then suffered the cost. She helped unlatch it but didn't let go of her glare's hold on him.

"Literally can't." Inuyasha ignored her assistance and turned his back to her as he buckled in another corner of the mast. "Used it all."

"You-you…" Kagome tried to wrap her head around his statement but had to take a seat and put her gaze on the line of the horizon to even begin to understand. "All that money…" Weeks of groceries. Months of rent. "Three thousand…"

"Yup."

She bundled her hands into fists and suppressed a scream. Where was her pillow when she needed it?

"I just wired that to you not even twenty-four hours ago…where could anyone even _spend_ that much…"

He was facing her now, almost completely finished with his quick work of hastening the mast, and glanced meaningfully past her shoulder at the bar he was walking towards beforehand.

Kagome looked behind her, spotted it, and turned to him with a look that could have killed a small animal.

"Didn't you think being an alcoholic was something you could have mentioned when I conducted the interview?"

"Wasn't on the application."

Inuyasha wound his way up the spreader of the ship, reminding Kagome of a spider monkey, while he tied the last of the adjustments. When he finished, he jumped down neatly and Kagome looked at him in amazement for a second, watching those same distracting arms from before flex as he crossed them across his chest again.

"And you tried to walk away earlier." Kagome addressed him coldly, connecting the dots faster this time and recalling his retreating back from earlier. "You looked straight at me, knew who I was, and tried to leave!"

He granted her the acute satisfaction of looking ashamed for a second, before replacing it with a shrug and a bored uninterested expression. "I can't say I was sure it was you."

"Oh, there's other young women trying unsuccessfully to man a sailboat all by themselves in the _after_ noon at 402 Shelby?"

"Young?" He had the gall to twitch his lips into a shit-eating smirk and all Kagome wanted was to watch his face plant to the ground.

She tapped her foot to release the tension that had built from her shoulders to her toes. "How long until we can take off? I have a deadline to meet or I'll lose the pod."

Inuyasha stopped what he was doing and watched her carefully, "We?" He stood from his half bent position where he was fiddling with the boat's tiller. "What do you mean, we?"

The sound of glass shattering all around her rung in Kagome's ears like a siren. "Do you think…do you think I paid you all that money so you can put up my mast?"

Inuyasha had look relaxed before, too relaxed, and made his way around her sailboat like he knew it better than the back of his hand; like he belonged there- but now he looked uncomfortable, moving towards her with an air of superiority that oozed from his skin like smoke. "You never said anything about me joining you on this trip in search of fish."

"Whales."

"Fish."

Kagome stood into his space with a glare to match his own and pursed her lips, "I specifically said I would need a _navigator_." She spread her arms, gesturing the the ocean all around them, "How are you supposed to navigate without being out there with me?!"

To be honest, Inuyasha vaguely remembered the conversation over the phone he had with her yesterday. He had picked up a call for him from the bar and pulled the receiving end of the handset away from his face as she babbled on loudly at a million miles per minute. He had caught the tail-end of what she was saying and she that she was offering Two-thousand dollars for his services, he didn't even care what those services entailed. His well had run dry, and he had been looking for work to refill it. Which is also why he bumped the deal up another thousand.

Now that she mentioned "navigator", the conversation started to piece together better in his mind, and a sense of dread came over him. She was a marine biologist, of that much he could gather from the bits he had caught from what she said over the phone, and if she needed a navigator, and there was something about a pod involved, she was expecting him to embark with her on a long-winded oceanic journey. Of which he had no privy to do.

"Listen lady," he looked down at her with dark overcast stare. "I don't care what you thought you had said, or what you seem to think I'm doing here, but I just repair and set boats. I don't travel."

"But-but-but," the spell of determination and resolve flushed from her and left nothing but confusion and worry in its' place. Kagome felt like she had shrunken into a small dried out fish fillet. "You…I paid you!"

"And I thank you." Inuyasha replied lamely, stepping around her towards the ramp to disembark.

Kagome couldn't help the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness as it squeezed her eyes shut and started marking salt water lines down her cheeks. Without a navigator she wouldn't reach the pod. Without the pod she couldn't do her research. Her research was her life's work, and her Master's program and survival depended on submitting the data for exchange in currency.

The flip flop between being frustrated that _this brute_ was who she was stuck with, and then finding out he had no plan to commit to what she had initially paid him for, felt like a head on collision with a train. She felt like she had been dumped into a hot spring and then the artic sea.

"Please."

Inuyasha stood very still and looked up into the sky, praying lightning would come down and strike him.

"Please, at least point me in the right direction."

He felt himself deflate, and turned back around, fully expecting another round of tears and frustration to face him, but all that was left was the small retreating back of the short girl, reaching for the nautical map discarded on the deck.

"I've got some things labeled out, but if you can at least tell me where we are on the map, maybe I can find my way to the coordinates."

He noticed she was holding the map upside down and wanted to smash his head into the nearest wall.

He wasn't going to do this. He wasn't going to help her. He couldn't. It wasn't happening.

"I think this way is North." Kagome pointed south and Inuyasha felt a twitch begin to quiver on his right eye.

What was the worst that would happen? She gets lost? The guard saves her. She gets lost…doesn't know how to mayday for the guard…she crashes. She swims to shore. She doesn't…she drowns. She dies.

Okay.

"How long is this trip supposed to take?" He led warily.

Kagome wiped away a tear from the corner of her eyes, and Inuyasha gnashed his jaw together. "Maybe a month. No more than two."

"Do you even have supplies to last that long?" He eyed her quizzically.

"I've got supplies for two weeks, then I'm scheduled to meet up with my academic program, turn in what I have, and exchange the data for more supplies." Kagome twirled a piece of hair that came loose around her ears and cocked her head. "At least if I can get there in time. I guess I'll just…starve if I don't."

Inuyasha closed his eyes behind her and groaned quietly from the top of his stomach to low in his throat; like the oncoming of a disastrous fate.

The small sound of Kagome's sniffling grated against his ears like nails on a chalkboard, and the unfamiliar sting of salt in the air brushed against his nostrils like a toxin.

"God, stop your cryin'!"

"Wh-what?" Kagome turned halfway and stopped suddenly when she realized she was much closer in proximity to him than she had been aware of. A faint pink flush spread from her nose to her ears.

"I'm sayin' I'll go with you, just…" He sighed. "Stop your crying."

"You-you…" Kagome swiped the under of her nose with a pointer finger and blinked away a new set of tears. "You will?"

Inuyasha looked at her then. Really looked at her. Took in her messy hair, the gray stormy color of her eyes, and the slight breath that heaved from her chest in-between her nude colored lips. She gazed at him with the most open vulnerable expression anyone had ever entrusted him with. He felt responsible for everything that had and would happen to her. He was hexed; enchanted. And he knew it was unreasonable, but for just a second he could not focus on why he had ever tried to abandon her in the first place.

"Great!" Kagome clasped her hands and the sound of them coming together woke Inuyasha from the spell. "Let's get going then, don't want to lose the daylight while we can! And besides, I only paid rent on this pier for up to six 'o clock, so if anyone catches me still out here, they'll fine me and quite honestly I'm broke and I do _not_ wanna get arrested."

And then in that moment, Inuyasha was able to focus on the _why_ quite well.

* * *

 _A/N: I promise I'm working on my two other projects. This was just sitting in my drafts so I had to polish and post._


	2. Chapter 2

_**a/n:** a bit of a prologue to get the story going, then an inukag scene that came after the first chapter! :)_

* * *

 **S A I L**

 _"I hate everything. Therapists. Telephones. Shoes. People."_

 _\- Inuyasha probably_

* * *

Inuyasha didn't have any family or friends, and even though it was fairly obvious he had to have had a mother at one point, the general consensus around the town was that he had none.

He spent his mornings fishing, his afternoons at the bar, and his nights passed out in front of it.

If anyone ever got too close, or tried to take conversation a bit too far, he'd be unkind and unapproachable. Inuyasha was the token grouch of the village, the only outlier being he seemed to be somewhere in his late 20's instead of the traditional early 60's.

Inuyasha liked it that way though. Or maybe he didn't so much as like it, since he never seemed to really like anything, but he preferred it.

The residents of the town assumed it was due to his demon heritage. They were simple-minded, and were just glad that he distanced himself from their company. They'd have to deal with a black eye on occasion, maybe a split lip or a bruised kidney, but overall it was a quiet existence.

Quiet and tucked away.

He picked up a job here and there; contract work that would be enough money to last him a few months until he picked up the next odd job. An extra crew member for a fishing expedition, or a boat that needed good repair. He was good with the boats. He could find his way around a boat blind, able to take it apart and piece it together before the moonrise.

He had one at one point- a boat that was; but he never paid the rent on the pier for it on time, and lost it.

A local therapist loved to scrutinize people at bars (really just the one bar everyone went to within a 25-mile radius), glancing at any given person from over her judgmental eyeglasses while nursing a fancy cocktail that the bar tender struggled to put together.

She had shot her gaze at him a few weeks ago, swirling her Moscow Mule and said, "You've been living with depression for so long that you can't even remember the last time you were happy."

"Go fuck yourself." He dismissed her and threw his coat over his shoulders in preparation to depart. He didn't like the therapist. She never spoke too many words verbally, but her eyes were heavy with remarks. And she just loved to stare at him like some attraction at some circus. He could just picture it. A plaque under his stuffed form with data and description.

 _Inuyasha: 28 years old. Jobless. Penniless. Part dog demon from a father he never met, part human from a woman who died when he was still learning to spell. Depressed. Angry. Alone._

He went home and tried to let the alcohol in his system seep the wakefulness from his bones. But a voice at the back of his head mulled over the fact he had just been professionally diagnosed with a major disorder. It tried to trick him into thinking about it.

"Whatever," he decided before taking another swig from a bottle of whiskey and falling into exhaustion.

* * *

"I need a job," Inuyasha coughed up finally, after the bar tender peered from him to his tip jar and back at him again.

Inuyasha thought his name was Hachi, but he really couldn't bet his life on it. Inuyasha barely knew anybody's name. Barely knew his own half the day.

"I'm fully staffed." Hachi (maybe) took the half-empty glass of beer from Inuyasha and dumped it out, throwing the glass into a sink full of water and spotty dish-soap.

"Hey!" Inuyasha groaned, standing sharply and curling his fingers into fists on the bar. "What the fuck?!"

"Your tab is at $1,420.45, and the room upstairs you're staying in is two months past due. $1579. Do you have any idea how much money you owe me?"

Inuyasha pinched the bridge of his nose and took his seat again, feeling pounds heavier than a few seconds ago. The lights above his head weren't spinning yet, but he had made a commitment to himself that he'd see them dancing by the end of tonight.

"Let me make the math easy for you, that's $3000. And I'm sorry brother, but I need that money today or you can't stay here anymore." The bar tender shook his head in dissatisfaction and moved down the counter to pick up someone else's order when they called him by name. Hachi confirmed.

"Damnit." Inuyasha growled lowly to himself before nesting his head in the circle of his arms. He wanted to be drunk, but he was barely there. He needed a job badly, but he hadn't heard of anyone looking for work in weeks.

He idly wondered if his entire life would just be one big circle of not having the things he wants when he needs them. A beer. A job. A mother. That was probably a side-effect of the depression. Or vice versa. Or who the fuck cares.

The sound of the phone ringing buzzed in the background noise of the bar, and Inuyasha shut his eyes, trying to decide between stealing a few more swigs of liquor and laying out on the dock until the sun rose, or stealing an entire bottle from the cabinet and hiding out in his tiny excuse for a room until Hachi barreled in to kick him out.

The only real problem was that the nearest bottle of liquor was tequila and Inuyasha was almost certain he was allergic to the toxin.

He could stomach raw meat, grain straight from the ground, and virtually anything drinkable that could kill his liver, but tequila- he was convinced- wasn't natural. He would argue that it was what the rivers in Hell run rich with.

When he lifted his head again, the phone was still ringing and he was one claw swipe away from ripping the landline to shreds.

"Don't even think about it." Hachi reappeared in front of him, reaching back behind the shelves of fine wine that nobody ever ordered, and picked up the phone. "Tanuki's Tiki, how can I help you?"

Inuyasha waited for him to turn around before starting to reach an arm into the cubby on the other side that held a bottle of tequila still wrapped and unopened.

"What type of work?"

Inuyasha stopped cold and eyed Hachi's balding spot with extreme interest.

"A-huh. Hmm. Yeah I might know someone. Can you hold for one second?" Hachi twisted around to survey the bar and then immediately zeroed in on Inuyasha handling the bottle of Patron to his lips. "You son of a-"

Inuyasha vaulted over the bar and took the phone from Hachi's large hands, balancing the receiving end in the crook of his neck, and fending off Hachi with the other as he struggled to take the alcohol from him. "Whatever the work entails, I'll do it sir."

Hachi snatched the bottle from Inuyasha after a little bit of tugging and grumbled to himself as he set to serving the rest of the customers.

 _"_ _Actually it's Miss."_

Inuyasha's dog ears made it easy to decipher what the lady on the other end of the line was babbling about after she cleared her throat, even when the phone wasn't exactly straight up against them, but his mind was swirling already with the affects from his one sip of tequila and he couldn't pay attention to what she was saying even if he had wanted to.

Biology research. Marine life. Boat. He grasped onto the few words he could properly understand, but even then everything danced around him like blinking lights.

 _"_ _-I'm offering two-thousand dollars-"_

"Done!" Inuyasha yelled through the phone. "But make it three." He amended.

After a few hesitant seconds, he cocked his ears in the direction of the phone, straining to hear her reply.

"O-okay…"

Sweet Eureka.

Then he felt the torched stare of Hachi bearing down on him like the sun baking a freshly cracked egg on concrete and he said, "And I need it wired to my account immediately."

 _"_ _And you'll be my navigator?"_

Inuyasha squeezed his eyes shut in annoyance, toying with the definition of what 'navigator' meant, fishing for the meaning at the back of his drunken haze. "Miss, I'll be whatever the hell you want me to be."

She went on to explain what time she needed him at and where, and he filed the information away for forgetting later that night.

* * *

 _..._

* * *

"I can't believe this is happening." Inuyasha blew a breath from his lips, looking like a balloon losing all of its' helium.

"Believe it," Kagome nudged at him as she climbed down the short stairs from one part of the deck to the other. "We're setting sail, first mate."

"First mate?" Inuyasha questioned with an unappreciative wrinkle on his lips. "You think you're the captain?"

"I don't _think_ , first mate!" She turned around to salute him with the sun at her back, casting a golden unavoidable outline around her form. "I know!"

"Wrong." He stated simply, ripping his gaze from her short figure and looking out towards the horizon forlornly. "I'm the captain of this ship now."

"Are you nuts? This is my ship."

"Yeah, and guess who's behind the wheel."

"A bad attitude with dog ears." She replied, not missing a beat.

Inuyasha scowled and playfully tugged the helm so that the boat looked like it was beginning to do a complete 360 degree turn. "I'll turn this thing right back around if that's the case." He relished in the panicked look that came over Kagome for a second. Dropping that sweet smirk into what he was learning to recognize as a familiar frown. "No sweat off my back."

"Quit it," she chastised, seeing partially through his façade and putting both her fists on opposite hips. "I'm not paying you to play with my boat."

"Yeah yeah." Inuyasha groaned, almost forgetting completely that all the money she had paid him, he had been forced to give up to Hachi seconds after receiving. "Fuck me…"

"What was that?" Kagome twisted around again, and he couldn't not notice the sun's outline again, accenting her curves and highlighting the ray of blues in her dark midnight hair. The light reflecting off her eyes. An uncomfortable feeling fell and twisted like snakes in his stomach and he very suddenly wanted a drink.

"Can you like go sit down somewhere and make yourself useless?"

"Can you like not be a jerk for ten seconds?"

Inuyasha moaned hopelessly and banged his head onto the giant wheel in his hands. "This is going to be the longest month ever."

"Or two." Kagome quipped in.

"Why'd I agree to this?"

The boat rocked them gently, the sun sinking into the line of the ocean as slow as the earth spun.

"Because you saw how vulnerable and helpless I was, and wanted to _protect_ me, of course." Kagome winked at him and did in fact take her seat, but now she was stretching out her endlessly long legs (how does it even make sense for someone so small to have those legs anyway), her skin contrasting beautifully against the maple wood stained color beneath her. She took her post on the edge of the ship, just inside the rails. And of course, she had to be wearing shorts. Since it was the middle of summer and everything. Since they were on a boat and everything. Since Inuyasha was doomed to fall even deeper into his professionally-diagnosed depression and everything.

"Keh," he spat. "You always fill your head with stupid lies?"

Kagome stuck her tongue out at him and he decided that she was probably feeling a little warm and wanted to go for a swim.

He expertly spun the wheel so that the boat tilted into a vertical almost-90 degree angle within seconds, and finally felt the pull of a smile spread like jam on his face when he heard the telling sound of Kagome's dense body hit the water. His grin grew wider when it was briskly followed by an angry high-pitched howl.

"Inuyasha!"

It was going to be a long two months, but he wasn't about to make every second agonizing suffrage- even if it was at the expense of hers.

He laughed.


End file.
